If the trend continues, the the GNU General Public License Version 3 will be used by 5,000 open source projects by the end of the year, blog reports

The number of open source projects that use the GNU General Public License Version 3 has grown to more than 2,000, according to Palamida, which sells software and services for tracking open source code within a customer's code base.

"Our database now contains over 2,000 projects that are using the GPL v3. At this rate the GPL v3 is being adopted by 1,000 projects every 4-5 months, and if the trend continues, the license will be used by 5,000 projects by the end of the year," states a recent posting on Palamida's blog.

The Free Software Foundation approved the GPL v3 in June 2007 following a protracted public discussion and amid dissent from Microsoft, which denied that its ongoing patent and interoperability agreement with Novell means it is subject to the license's terms.

Richard Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation, described the advantages of moving to GPL v3 -- which include added protection for users from patent infringement claims -- in a essay published here.